Tag Archives: social networking

Face it, ladies: your DIY projects rarely turn out like the ones you see on Pinterest, and your Facebook posts aren’t universally “liked.” But a new survey suggests that despite such woes, social networking is still good for you.

The survey found that women who frequently use social media, along with other technologies, to connect with friends and family report feeling less stressed than women who connect less often.

If you’re on Linked In you’ve gotten them. The notes from people that you linked up with because you met them once at a mixer or because they knew someone you knew, or, let’s be honest, because you wanted to see that ‘500+ connections’ next to your name.

Some of them will eventually drop you a quick note about what they do and then ask you to endorse them. This must work, because a lot of people are doing it. I get at least one person a week asking me to endorse them. I don’t know them any better than the person ahead of me in line at Starbucks.

Now the truth is, if I wanted not to receive these e-mails, I would never link to people that I wouldn’t recommend. But I get at several requests to link every day, and the more links you have the more you get until it’s a never ending stream. If you’re half paying attention, the urge to just click ‘accept’ will get the best of you. Besides, the more people you’re linked to, the more influential you are, right?

But at the end of the process you have a another version of Facebook, where the connections don’t really mean anything, but you have a good count. It makes Linked In a beauty contest, not the connection engine as it was originally conceived as. Really, if you think about it, your real goal should be to have as few connections as possible, but of high enough quality and character that you would unreservedly recommend them at the drop of a hat. And those that you link with should be willing to do exactly the same for you. Otherwise, what is the point?

What is the point, indeed. Stories are told of collaborations that lead to millions of dollars in deals being done. Tales of jobs, sometimes unsolicited, being brought to people through their Linked In contacts. I do see that happening on a few of the groups that I belong to, rarely. For the most part, it’s a lot of noise as people try to stand out from an ever growing crowd.

Quantity is not quality. Quality begins when we make better choices. That starts with including who’s in and who’s not in our circle of business partners and associates.

Compared to the last boom/bust technology cycle that culminated with the dot com crash of 2000, the social-era combatants are in an even more precarious position. Back then, the engine of the expansion was e-commerce, which at least generated revenue (although clearly not at ROI sufficient to save Pets.com, Webvan.com, Boo.com and legions of other online ghosts). Last time, success and failure was driven as much by expense control as revenue generation, and the huge influx of public market financing through IPOs allowed start-up companies to essentially trade dollars back and forth in a giant shell game.

Pinterest took a giant step yesterday toward attracting business users when it unveiled a slew of business tools and resources. First among them, a set of “Business Terms of Service.”

Among them, a warning that you pretty much surrender your rights to anything you post there. “Pinterest and its users a non-exclusive, royalty-free, transferable, sublicensable, worldwide license to use, store, display, reproduce…” (it goes on).

Second that, unlike most business arrangements, this is not a contract: Pinterest may terminate or suspend this license at any time “with our without cause or notice to you.” Third, an indemnity clause. They don’t summarize it on the Business Terms as they do for the personal terms, but the short story is that if Pinterest gets sued over your post, you pay for it.

Mark Zuckerberg set up the entire structure of the company so he wouldn’t be forced to make dumb short-term decisions by whining public-market shareholders. And he TOLD them that he wasn’t going to make those decisions. They just didn’t listen.

I have been always providing “great content” and got myriads of natural organic links plus all those things Google demands you to do. All that white hat SEO stuff people recommend to you. It doesn’t work though. Yes, I said it.

White hat SEO does not work.

You can be the whitest hat alive like I was on this blog and in the end you get a kick in your guts. Black hat SEO gets you penalized even faster but white hat SEO does as well.

The only thing that works is SEO 2.0 as in my original concept. You have to become independent of Google. You need to establish an audience on social media and direct traffic alias subscribers and returning visitors. Google is not a reliable traffic source whatsoever.